AFRICAN CARDINAL ROBERT SARAH REBUKES PRO-GAY FR. JAMES MARTIN

AFRICAN CARDINAL ROBERT SARAH REBUKES PRO-GAY FR. JAMES MARTIN

Cdl. Robert Sarah: Clergy “must be faithful to the unchanging teachings of Christ”

DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) – In a stinging op-ed, a high-ranking Vatican cardinal is calling out celebrity Jesuit Fr. James Martin for pushing the homosexual narrative. Published in the Wall Street Journal Thursday, Cdl. Robert Sarah’s commentary responds to Martin’s recently released Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity.

“Those who speak on behalf of the Church must be faithful to the unchanging teachings of Christ,” Sarah said, “because only by living in harmony with God’s creative design do we find deep and lasting fulfillment.”

Martin is best known for promoting greater acceptance of active homosexuality, criticizing the Church for lacking a more “welcoming” attitude. Martin also refuses to criticize same-sex marriage or preach on the need for chastity for active gays. After the U.S. Supreme Court issued its June 2015 ruling legalizing gay marriage, Martin took to Facebook to write, in part:

Love means: getting to know LGBT men and women, spending time with them, listening to them, being challenged by them, hoping the best for them, and wanting them to be a part of your lives, every bit as much as straight friends are part of your lives. Love first. Everything else later. In fact, everything else is meaningless without love.

There was no condemnation of the Court ruling, but plenty of scolding of the Church for failing to understand homosexuals.

Martin has also criticized the language of the Catechism calling same-sex attraction disordered, urging that the language be changed to indicate that homosexuality is merely a “differently ordered” sexuality.

The central theme of Martin’s new book as characterized by the priest is that, for Jesus, “there is no us and them, there is only us.” Building a Bridge fails to include Church teaching on marriage or the need for chastity, and doesn’t acknowledge same-sex-attracted Catholics who choose a life of chastity.

“Martin is right that people with same sex attraction should be met with compassion, respect and sensitivity,” wrote Fr. Dwight Longenecker in June, “but it is surprising that he doesn’t mention the difficult call to celibacy that Catholicism expects.”

Martin admits he deliberately left this teaching out because “the Catholic Church’s stance on the matter is clear,” adding, “I am no moral theologian and did not want to enter into a discussion about church teaching on sexual activity.”

Responding to this failure, Sarah explained in his op-ed, “For the unmarried — no matter their attractions — faithful chastity requires abstention from sex.”

“With God’s grace and our perseverance,” he added, “chastity is not only possible, but it will also become the source for true freedom.”

Sarah reminded his audience a key fact omitted from Martin’s book: homosexual acts are “gravely sinful and tremendously harmful to the well-being of those who partake in them.”

“People who identify as members of the LGBT community are owed this truth in charity,” Sarah insisted, “especially from clergy who speak on behalf of the Church about this complex and difficult topic.”

Martin hit back in a response published the same day in America, where he is editor-at-large, accusing Sarah of ignoring “the immense suffering that L.G.B.T. Catholics have felt at the hands of their church.”

Rejecting Sarah’s characterization of his book as a critique of Church doctrine, Martin countered, “Building a Bridge is not a book of moral theology nor a book on the sexual morality of L.G.B.T. people. It is an invitation to dialogue and to prayer … .”

Even so, Martin has been quick elsewhere to criticize the Church for failing to catch up with the times. Defending his book in June, he wrote that “in many ways the Catholic Church is today where the rest of Western society was in the 1990s. While many sociopolitical entities are accepting of L.G.B.T. people, in many places in the church that is not the case.”

With God’s grace and our perseverance, chastity is not only possible, but it will also become the source for true freedom. Tweet

Martin accepted a Bridge Building award from the condemned New Ways Ministry (whom he approvingly cites from time to time on social media). New Ways, which promotes active homosexuality, gay marriage and female priests, has been condemned numerous times by the Vatican and is forbidden from speaking in dioceses around the country.

It was over such controversial positions that Martin was recently disinvited from being keynote speaker at the October gala for the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, after outraged knights complained to leadership.

Sarah is among the very few prelates who have publicly called out Martin for his pro-gay ideology. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois has also rebuked the Jesuit, whom he says “gets a lot wrong.”

“God himself is the author of marriage” (GS 48:1). The vocation of marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes (CCC:1603)

Many believe the Freemasons are simply a centuries-old charitable fraternity. However, the Catholic Church has consistently condemned Freemasonry more than any other error in its history because it promotes indifferentism, naturalism, communism, and other dangerous philosophies.

Michael Voris gives a series of short talks, answering questions coming in response to his talk on homosexuality in Nigeria.

In this talk from Nigeria, Michael Voris speaks about the grave evil presented as good – homosexuality. Catechism of Catholic Church teaches that, “Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity (cf. Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10), tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” (CDF, Persona humana 8). They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (CCC: 2357).

Michael Voris talks an in-depth discussion of the true, financial cost of abortion and its effects to the United States. Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, “The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being’s right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death” (CDF, Donum vitae III; CCC: 2273).

Contraception & the New Dark Age, Part 1-4: Where we are & How we got here by Dr. Martin Brenner click below:

We are used to thinking of the Rockefellers as simply a byword for wealth, power and financial success. Perhaps we might think of them as determined businessmen or see them as great philanthropists. But the truth is far different; the Rockefeller Foundation is actively undermining the Catholic Church, and in the process, attempting to erase man’s natural orientation to the eternal.

Are the environmental movements and groups simply devoted to laudable, correct stewardship of God’s creation, or do they have a more sinister, hidden agenda? Is “global warming” being used as an excuse for something far darker? Is the final goal of the liberal elites behind the push of junk science population control, eugenics and Gaia worship?

This week on Mic’d Up we’ll be tackling the terrible scourge of Contraception on the Church. Michael Hichborn and Rey Flores from American Life League will join us to expose Catholic Relief Services complicity with Organizations who support contraception and to Discuss The Pill Kills Day of Action 2014. Also joining us will be Lynn Mills who will be discussing the continued prayer rally at Providence Park Hospital in the Archdiocese of Detroit because of their complicity in abortion, contraception and sterilization. Following that same thread we’ll break down the announcement from Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron concerning the crisis of parish closings facing Detroit. Also dropping by will be author James Kalb, to discuss the plague of pluralism on the Church’s Hierarchy.